The Last Faith is a grueling metroidvania, leaning into pinnacle souls-like gameplay elements that reward exploration, precision, and patience. Its combat may be simple and fun, but the challenge of mastering its traversal may be too much to handle. Its gorgeous visuals might not be distinct enough to separate itself from the pack of its predecessors, but it’s a great start for those wanting to test the waters of the souls genre.
One of my biggest issues that emerge when reading video game reviews occurs when a reviewer will express disliking a genre, reviewing a game of that genre, and then holding genre-defining gameplay elements as reasons to complain about the game being reviewed. I get it, we can’t expect every reviewer to love every genre, but we should attempt to be fair and as unbiased as possible when assessing a game’s quality and its ability to execute good gameplay.
For instance, I’ve often complained about the souls-like genre being frustrating. I’ve tried my hand at Demon Souls and Bloodborne on my PlayStation 4/5, and neither of them stuck. Something about dying over and over and over again yucks my yum when I want to unwind after a long day of work. Yet, over the past few years, I’ve played Hollow Knight and reviewed similarly difficult metroidvanias, namely Aeterna Noctis, Rogue Legacy 2, and Blasphemous 2.
When I picked up The Last Faith, I didn’t know much about it other than that it was a metroidvania. I saw some of the trailers, sure, but very little of the game’s description made an impression in my noggin other that it looked cool as hell. I kept a level head.
So, I started playing The Last Faith. It felt like a metroidvania. It looked like a metroidvania. I was fine. I was just dying a lot. Oh hell, I died so many times! Boss fights felt ridiculous. I kept having to backtrack to get retain my experience. Rinse and repeat for nearly 20 hours!
At the 10-hour mark it clicked: The Last Faith is a souls-like metroidvania. I just didn’t realize it. I had been having fun for 10 hours before realizing that this was a game from a genre I supposedly hated.
My name is Will, and this is how I learned to love the souls genre by playing and nearly completing The Last Faith.
The Last Faith follows Eryk, a curse-bearer with little knowledge of who he is, his purpose, and the world around him. Beyond that, however, the story is incredibly vague and relies on breadcrumb storytelling to inform the player of Eryk’s world and its dangers within.
From my experience reading through others’ experiences with the likes of Elden Ring and other souls titles, environmental storytelling ends up being the forefront of narrative progression. It’s up to the player to figure out their purpose while exploring vast worlds full of danger that can kill the player in nought more than two hits. Some titles may hide away the major story beats within lore tabs in menus, occasionally showing the player a cutscene of a pivotal moment involving the player or a major character. For The Last Faith, breadcrumb storytelling is the primary means of telling its story…and I couldn’t tell you the major narrative plotlines without needing to use a wiki (that doesn’t exist right now).
The Last Faith is a gorgeous game. It’s a difficult one, too. But it is void of narrative hooks that connect the player with its world while also fostering emotional investment in the game’s universe. Instead, it relies on other feelings and gameplay mechanics to keep folks persisting despite its massive difficulty curve.
When I started playing, I first noticed that movement feels incredibly slow – slower than other metroidvanias. I even thought that there was an issue with my controllers (yes, plural) because of how I experienced slight delay when moving and attacking. This ended up being the majority of my experience I was forced to get used to.
The game’s sluggishness requires folks to be intentional and quite precise with their inputs, almost to a pixel-perfect extent. Most abilities have a slight delay and cannot be cancelled, so all actions are to be done with meaning in order to succeed. If I wanted to pop a health potion, I had to position myself well out of harm’s way to ensure that I didn’t incur additional damage or even die while Eryk stared at the health potion for a split second before regaining health. This delay lends itself to a frustrating experience for those unfamiliar with souls’ games difficulty. It wouldn’t surprise me if players interpreted this game as being unfair because of how the player is forced into committing to their actions and exposing themselves to any dangers present in the room. The sluggishness persists for most of the game, sadly, until you unlock the double jump. The double jump is the only upgrade that breaks free from the traversal sluggishness. Once I unlocked it, I began to appreciate the game quite a lot more and the bosses felt far easier. However, that singular upgrade shouldn’t be the sole blessing of power bestowed on the player – especially since additional traversal upgrades should make the player feel incrementally less sluggish over time.
This is all to say that the movement will push some players away. The design choice to reward precision presents a steeper-than-usual difficulty curve for players unfamiliar with souls’ games precision and punishing combat.
The Last Faith’s combat is quite simple and fun, however. It doesn’t rely on complex input combinations that reward those who can pass dexterity checks in the form of lightning fast input. Instead, it encourages players to whittle away at enemies while purposefully moving and dodging enemies’ powerful projectiles and attacks. Simple melee attacks with empowered weapon-moves that cost focus (mana) comprise the meat of the game’s combat along with a handful of elemental spells that damage enemies rather than augment my strengths. The Stigma system gave Eryk an additional power such as a shield and parry, giving me some outs if I struggled against up-close enemies.
During my playthrough, I relied on the same handful of weapons despite coming across more and more on a regular basis. I upgraded a select 2-3 weapons rather than incrementally upgrading each weapon I came across. In turn, I was rewarded in the form of enemies being far easier than they should. Weapon upgrades ended up increasing the individual strengths of the weapons, some of them bossing their elemental damage, too. However, I got a better bang for my buck from simply spending currency on character stat upgrades for greater returns.
Notice how I said that I relied on the same handful of weapons rather than handful of weapons and spells? I ended up using spells far less than I needed to. Despite the spells looking and feeling powerful, they lacked a consistent damage output and required too much focus (mana) to be worth using on a regular basis. Even more – investing points into strength and vitality had better returns since health and strength increased offensive stats, leading me to believe that the game encouraged players’ to prioritize offense as the best form of defense.
In a typical metroidvania, you would expect the gameplay loop to involve slightly leashed exploration that encourages the player to go off and wander wherever. The leash emerges when the player is no longer to proceed because they lack the traversal mechanic to proceed. The Last Faith is structured to encourage exploration in multiple directions with as very little hand-holding as possible. Its world branches out in every direction, largely accessible without most traversal upgrades that usually gate player from proceeding. Instead, The Last Faith’s enemies vary in strength on a biome-by-biome basis, deterring weaker players from continuing until they’ve grown stronger from a different path.
This approach to hands-off exploration echoes that of Blasphemous 2, albeit with far less information and even less easiness. All I had on my travels was a gigantic map that I could freely modify with markers to remind me of where to go and what to return to when I have what I needed. This approach works in The Last Faith’s favor quite well because of how easy it is to wander wherever and discover new things. When I couldn’t proceed past a boss, that signaled to me that I was out of my depth and needed to explore elsewhere to gather additional experience and/or weapons/spells that would make my playthrough easier.
My issue with this hands-off approach is that the game becomes way too stingy in giving the player an idea of what’s happening, what’s at stake, and what I could do next. While some NPCs would occasionally hint at where I should go next in the vaguest of terms, there was little else I could use to keep track of currently-active sidequests and main quests. The major icons on my map were simply red doors (unable to access), green doors (can access at any time), elevators, and save shrines. No unique NPC emblems, no boss room emblems, no textual list of what I was currently attempting to accomplish. Nada. It seems like I wasn’t trusted to gain access to information that give me a deeper connection to Eryk’s world and figure out who I’m attempting to defeat.
On the other hand, the lack of information meant that I was constantly on the hunt to find secrets, and finding secrets I did. When I ended up finding things, it felt great to get a new weapon or a new spell. I got something else to play with! The issue is that some of these secrets ended up being hidden behind destructible walls with very little indication of the rewards within. After realizing around 15 hours in that I was missing some weapons, I stopped looking for bosses and began whacking away at every single wall, suspiciously placed or not, for something that may have contained a new secret. I was able to find some secret bosses, though. The bosses were quite intense.
One of the pinnacle elements of souls-like games involves incredibly difficult boss battles against massive beasts and/or powerful inhuman entities. Upon slaying a boss, players feel a wave of relief that washes away the frustrations of the previous failed attempts. This was consistent in The Last Faith with its demonic monstrosities and enemies modeled after my own character. Some of them felt unfair at first, yes, but once I was able to figure out the attack patterns they ended up being quite manageable. Thankfully, very few bosses relied on gimmicks like elemental weaknesses that were just as unfair as the bosses themselves. However, a handful of them were more susceptible to damage over time, so it was nice to see my attempts at switching up my loadouts to have slight impacts.
Multiple times during boss battles I audibly said “oh lord” or “not again” because of how they surprised me with changes in their attack patterns and battle phases. Some bosses grew stronger and relied on “gotcha” moments that kept me on my toes, whereas others evolved to the point of changing their entire movesets and becoming more difficult than at first.
Everything looks like a gorgeous fresco painting in The Last Faith. From the biomes, the enemies, to the enemies’ projectiles, the pixelated environments are highly detailed and inspired by gothic elements. Some stages felt like they belonged in a museum because of how well they contrasted selective lighting with biomes’ unique elements. Despite the gorgeous visuals, some of these visual elements are derivative and align a little too well with the likes of Castlevania. It’s one thing to pay homage to a series that utilizes gothic imagery, but it needs to separate itself in a way that makes it look visually distinct. Blasphemous 2 incorporates Spanish Catholicism to distinguish itself from the pack, but The Last Faith…not so much. It looks pretty, just not uniquely pretty.
Perhaps I’ve been too tough on the souls-like genre of games. My experience with The Last Faith has been a positive one, barring minor quibbles with its movement and how it presents information to the player. I was fully engrossed in exploring its world even though I had little idea of what was present and who I was up against. It rewarded my persistence and desires to explore with additional tools to change up my preferred style of combat. I enjoyed this game quite a bit…so maybe I should try my hand at another souls game.
That said, let’s wrap this up.
The Last Faith is a grueling metroidvania, leaning into pinnacle souls-like gameplay elements that reward exploration, precision, and patience. Its combat may be simple and fun, but the challenge of mastering its traversal may be too much to handle. Its gorgeous visuals might not be distinct enough to separate itself from the pack of its predecessors, but it’s a great start for those wanting to test the waters of the souls genre.
A copy of The Last Faith was provided by the publisher for the sole purpose of this review.
